Written for a prompt at sherlockbbc-fic . livejournal 22393 . html?thread=131901305#t131901305 - although the prompt is a spoiler, so consider yourself warned.
Did you know a regular dose of angst in your fanfic is good for you? It's, like, the dietary fiber of fanfiction. Or, at least, it feels that way.
Whatever it is, this prompt fill came to me and I couldn't sleep until I wrote it down, so here you go. Hopefully two fics in one day makes up for some of my dry spells without :-)
John got the call shortly before dawn on a Monday morning. He hadn't spoken to Mycroft in nearly a year, but it wasn't surprising at all that the man knew his new number. Mycroft had never sounded panicked, in all the time John had known him, but he sounded panicked now. Sherlock is alive, but in hospital. Come quickly.
He stared at his phone for a full minute after Mycroft hung up. Sherlock is alive. He'd spent so long wishing, hoping that his mad genius flatmate had pulled the wool over everyone's eyes one final dramatic time, and yet-
"Go," said Mary, rolling over and pressing a sleepy kiss to his shoulder. "I know you want to."
"It's . . . what do I say?"
"Everything you wanted to tell him before, and everything you've been saving up in the years since he jumped," she said with the candor he'd always loved about her. "He meant a lot to you - you've never stopped mourning him, even when you chose to get on with your life and try to forget. Now you can face it all at once. I know you, John, and I know you would much rather take on something head-on than drag it out. Now go."
He went.
By the time the taxi got to the hospital - not St. Bart's, this time, somewhere posh on the complete opposite side of London instead - John had plenty to say. Most of it was expletives. The rest needed to be delivered at top volume for maximum effectiveness. If Sherlock was healthy enough, it might even be accompanied by a black eye. Or an embarrassingly clingy hug. He still wasn't sure on that part.
The reality turned out to be none of the above - even though the building itself was a cut above the run-of-the-mill NHS hospital architecture John was used to, the sense of fear pervading the hallways was the same. John stepped into Sherlock's room to find a worried-looking Mycroft, a harried-looking not-Anthea, and a sleeping Sherlock.
"Head trauma," Mycroft said quietly. As if Sherlock needed quiet, would suddenly awaken and hear them. "Three years in hiding, taking down Moriarty's network piece by piece, and some goon finally got in a lucky hit. He opened his eyes for a bit earlier, when I called you, but he's back asleep now."
Head wounds could be very bad. John felt all the anger drain out of him, along with all the adrenaline currently keeping him awake and upright. He grabbed for the nearest chair and sank into it. "What's his prognosis?"
"Uncertain." Mycroft's face was still carefully neutral, but the way he kept his eyes on Sherlock revealed his anxiety. "The surgeon said he might regain completely normal cerebral function if they can control the swelling, but that's by no means a sure thing. She suggested his friends and family should be prepared for behavioral changes, memory loss, perhaps loss of cognitive function."
Shit. Sherlock without his fantastic intellect would be . . . devastated hardly began to describe it. Destroyed. He was his brain - if he didn't have that, didn't have his wit and deductions and his bloody mind palace, he'd-
"John." Mycroft's soft voice interrupted before John could dredge up an ending for that thought. "I feel like I need to say - thank you for coming. Despite everything that's happened. He could always count on you."
"Tell me." John turned his chair so he could face Mycroft head-on over Sherlock's prone body, so still and silent between them. "Tell me everything."
"Mycroft."
Sherlock's voice was so scratchy John could barely make out the name, but it was the first thing Sherlock said since opening his eyes, the first time he acknowledged there was anyone else with him in the room, and that was a fantastic start. Mycroft jumped a bit in his seat. He'd been engrossed in a complicated-looking report delivered in a manilla folder by the mysterious Anthea, but he immediately dropped the papers and pulled his chair closer to Sherlock's side. "I'm here."
John immediately put down his crossword and took a seat at Sherlock's other side. It had been three days - three long days of bed-sitting, of skipping his shifts at the surgery, of Mary coming to the hospital after she got off work and bringing up mediocre food from the cafeteria so he wouldn't forget to eat and then bundling him into a cab when visiting hours were over. Sherlock had opened his eyes once or twice, had occasionally shifted in his bed, but this was the first time he was inclined to interact and he wasn't brain-dead and fuck, John shouldn't have had to be trying so hard not to cry.
"You got older," Sherlock said. Surprisingly distinct, considering his days of silence.
Mycroft frowned. "Having you for a brother will do that," he replied carefully. "How do you feel?"
"Like my head is full of pudding." Sherlock's gaze swung slowly over to John's face. "You're not my doctor."
Doesn't he . . . "No."
"You're a doctor, but you're not my doctor."
Mycroft leaned forward, inserting himself into Sherlock's field of vision. "Doctor John Watson, your former flatmate. You do remember him, don't you?"
Sherlock shook his head no, and John's entire world seized up.
"When was this?"
"What do you remember?"
Sherlock frowned, the expression creating a little furrow between his eyebrows that hadn't been there when John saw him last. Three years ago. "Recently? A lot of running, mostly. Some fighting. Childhood, university years, working cases as a detective? That's all true, isn't it?"
John nodded, fought to keep from grabbing Sherlock's hand and squeezing for all he was worth. "Do you remember me, Sherlock?" he asked, his voice only a tiny bit huskier than usual. "Do you remember our flat, the way we worked together on cases? I kept a blog for you, do you remember?"
"No, I'm sorry." The little furrow deepened. "What would I need a blogger for?"
In all the scenarios John had envisioned over the last three years - Sherlock discredited, Sherlock vindicated after death, Sherlock suddenly reappearing as if nothing had happened and dragging him off on a grand new adventure - somehow Sherlock forgetting had never even crossed John's mind. He reeled back, feeling as if Sherlock's words had been an actual physical slap.
He doesn't know who I am. Sherlock. Didn't remember him. The tightness in his throat threatened to turn to bile.
"A suggestion," Mycroft murmured, ever-tactful even in the midst of John's own personal worst nightmare, the realization that yes, there was something worse than seeing your friend commit suicide right in front of your eyes. "When you're well enough to leave, John can take you to your old flat and you can see it for yourself. Deduce it. Mrs. Hudson has kept it just like it was when John left - surely there will be something there which will be of value to you."
"Fine," Sherlock said, flicking a long finger in a gesture which would have been an elegant wave if he'd been at his full strength. "I have nowhere else to be."
Sherlock stopped just inside the door to 221B and looked around with a little half-smirk on his lips. The expression was so familiar it made John's chest ache just to see it.
"I can tell it's just how we left it. Magnificent."
"Yeah." John closed the door behind them, tried to see the room as if he were observing it for the first time. "Mycroft kept the rent paid after - well, after. I moved out eventually, though." The entire flat was practically a shrine, still. Mrs. Hudson must have been coming to dust on occasion.
"I was in love with you, once."
John's world stopped. Surely Sherlock hadn't-
But he had, and now he was watching John with a puzzled look on his face. John cleared his throat and forced his lungs to resume functioning. "You never said anything, if you were."
"Of course not. That's obvious." Sherlock started to wander, touching this and that, picking up objects and examining them and putting them back down again. "I've never been much for sentiment."
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. "I'm sorry, Sherlock. I never knew." He cleared his throat again, choking back whatever other emotions threatened to come spilling out. "We weren't - not like that, not really, but we could have been. If I had known. Everyone assumed it, anyway. I wish you had told me before - I've got a fiancee now. Her name is Mary. No reason for you to remember her - I only really got to know her after you - well, after I thought you had-"
"John." Sherlock stopped still, clasped his hands behind his back, cocked his head to one side slightly like he always did when he was trying to figure out a suspect's actions but couldn't understand because they were motivated by some nuanced emotion. "Please don't. It's better this way, clearly - there's no need to apologize to me. You have a fiancee whom you obviously adore and I don't remember you anyway, so there's nothing to mourn. You really shouldn't feel any sense of obligation - from what Mycroft has told me, you are happier now." He took one last glance around the room and nodded. "Right. Now that that's over with, I think I'm ready to go back to Mycroft's house and try to settle in - no doubt he's going to fuss terribly."
Nothing to mourn. John's wounds from the last three years were open again, bleeding in full force, and Sherlock was smiling politely and taking his leave. John straightened his spine and forced his right arm forward in what felt like a parody of a handshake.
"I do appreciate you taking the time to show me the flat," Sherlock said, taking his hand and pumping it twice. Completely professional, completely impersonal. "Best of luck to you and Mary on your upcoming nuptials, and I do hope you won't mind Mycroft keeping himself updated on your welfare. He does seem to think highly of you. Cheers."
John waited until the sleek black car disappear from view before dissolving into a limp puddle of desperately un-masculine sobbing.